Month: October 2005

Who Are The Peacemakers?

we all are
each time we pause to hold a child,
each time we extend a gentle hand
each good deed done
each kind word said
each moment of compassion felt
we are keeping the peace

each time we speak truth to power
each time we take a stand against harmful action
each time we defend those most vulnerable
each time we offer our talents for good use
each time we pause to keep ourselves even
each time we hold each other up
we are keeping the peace

each day we remember
that peace is the strongest fabric
that weaving peace takes more courage
than generating war
each day we choose to stay at the loom
weaving our portion, with steady hands
we are keeping the peace

(Crossposted at Ourword.org/villageblue.com)

Good morning, good evening all, welcome to the FBC.
We had a very good response yesterday, with the “Tell Us Why you came to Booman, diaries and I see they are continuing today…so keep those going, they are great testimonials to the site.
We also had the Photo fair, which was a great success, thanks to Katiebird, Brother, Nag, Andif, and many others who contributed their beautiful and gorgeous pictures.
Today we will have this lovely tea set for serving our guests in the cafe, and now I must stop writing to get this cafe up for all the guests waiting just outside the door.
Have a great day everyone!

I am happy to report that liberal film scores yet again with George Clooney’s film “Good Night and Good Luck”, a dynamite new film focusing on Edward R. Murrow and his dealings with Joe McCarthy during the 50’s Red Scare. The film is quite pointedly a discussion of how advertisers and government try to muscle the media into doing their bidding and are willing to go to any length to ensure that it happens.

The film covers a few wonderful instances when Murrow and CBS stood up to these powers and either made them back down or fought back and won. If you need a feel good movie that speaks to the heart and soul of American democracy this is the one, not only for the subject matter but for the great performance by David Strathairn as Murrow.

Clooney is quite straightforward about his intentions by the episodes he focuses on in Murrow’s life (he directs, co-writes and co-stars). Except for a small subplot about supporting characters, the entire film is set in the television studio or local bar they hang out after work during the time when Murrow begins to speak out against the McCarthy witch hunt. The other scenes are actual footage of McCarthy during the hearings.

This is a beautifully shot film that takes you up close during a battle that, if it had gone sour would have affected news reporting for decades afterward. It makes you wonder what would have happened during the Nixon years if reporters like Woodward and Bernstein were shackled had Murrow been discredited. It also highlights how our press now consists of the Judy Miller’s and DC press hacks who until recently mostly just nodded in the run up to the Iraq War.

So much food for thought in this film, I recommend you check it out at your local theater. Supporting a film like this one sends a message that we want film to examine these issues and reward them when they do it so well.

Bravo Mr. Clooney on a very important film. I look forward to his next feature (acting, not directing) in “Syriana” which looked topical and engrossing. Both “Syriana” and “Jarhead” trailers shown before the film look amazing and show there is much more liberal film in the pipeline for the autumn season.

cross-posted at Liberal Streetfighter

(Warning, BFD-big fat diary)

As some of you know I was recently asked to join an organization that’s trying to work on progressive message coordination and formulation statewide in Wisconsin. I thought some of the same ideas that I’m working on over there might be useful to a broader community and so decided to post the initial plan on Booman, both to see if people are interested in using some of those ideas here and to get input on how to refine them.

After poking through their site and thinking a bit I decided that the best thing I could do was help set up a forum for collaboratively building progressive letters to the editor and aggregating talking points.

I’m currently calling it bullet points and I see it as a place where people could drop aggregated, research-based talking points on a specific topic like say the Plame investigation in the form of quotes and single sentence summaries. It’s not quite posting letters and not quite framing, but somewhere in the land between, call it framed letter templates.

The following is long, but illustrative. Here are five of my letters to the editor published in the Dunn County News with the generalizable bullet points extracted for reuse in other sorts of letter. Each of the bullet points has a set of topics attached to the end with the idea that letters in these areas could use these examples as reinforcement. These were all built around Hurricane Katrina and the Federal response, but all have useful points for other arguments.

I’ll discuss how the idea might play out here at Booman below the letters.

More on the flip

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

image and poem below the fold